Nvidia was confident in the hash rate limit claiming it would be difficult it would be to get around the protections placed on the GPUs, claiming "End users cannot remove the hash limiter from the driver. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter".

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 can deliver around 40-45 MH/s for standard performance but this dropped down to 20-25 MH/s if the GPU detected mining-related activity, providing the limiter is in place.

However, a picture spotted by I_Leak_VN reveals a Chinese mod developed to help miners unlock the full hash potential of the GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, with the image showing the Geforce RTX 3060 delivering 45 MH/s in Ethereum.

The hash-rate limiter mod has also been separately confirmed to work by a Vietnamese Facebook group, even capable of outputting 50 MH/s.

To be fair the crypto mining algorithm in question is for Octopus, which is different from cryptocurrency Ethereum, which the hash rate limiter was designed to thwart. Nividia might get around that problem with an updated driver.